In the latest crackdown by hardliners against popular social media applications
in Iran, the Intelligence Ministry has detained several channel administrators
of Telegram.
Hardline domestic news outlets have subsequently aired admins' alleged video
"confessions."

A screenshot of the heavily edited alleged video "confession" of a man
identified as "Shahin."

Telegram is a mobile instant messaging application that also allows users to
create membership-based online content channels and groups.

The ultra-conservative Fars News Agency, which first reported the arrests on
February 2, 2017, claimed the crackdown was aimed at breaking up a ring of
"domestic agents" (indirect reference to "spies") in several Iranian provinces.

Fars, which is closely aligned with the Revolutionary Guards, also claimed that
one of the targeted Telegram channels, Guard-e-Javidan (Immortal Guards), was
being directed by "anti-revolutionaries" (dissidents) based abroad.

The Immortal Guards were a unit of ancient Persia's military forces; the
Telegram channel's name suggests that whoever created it favors a secular
government for Iran.

The same day the arrests were reported, the hardline Young
Journalists Club, a branch of Iran's state-funded broadcasting organization
(also known as IRIB), posted a video of the alleged "confession" of
a man introduced as "Shahin."

In the blurry, heavily edited video, a man appears to be telling someone not
filmed by the camera that he is an administrator of the Immortal Guards Telegram
channel based in Khuzestan Province.

The latest attempt by hardliners to counter the growing popularity of Telegram,
which is used by an estimated more than 20 million people in Iran, comes amid
intensifying criticism by hardliners of President Hassan Rouhani's government
for allegedly failing to properly censor
online content.

cartoon by Amin Montazeri

Ayatollah Nasser Makarem Shirazi, a conservative senior cleric in Qom, claimed
on January 30, 2017 that Rouhani has "no serious intention" of limiting access
to anti-Islamic content on the Internet. He also called for the improvement of
the Islamic Republic's recently launched domestic
Internet.

"We must increase the National Information Network's (domestic internet's)
bandwidth and decrease (access to the world wide web) so that it would be harder
to access places like Instagram or Telegram," said Shirazi.

"We need serious determination to combat this problem, but I don't see it coming
from the top (Rouhani administration)," he added. "We even have a "Working Group
to Determine Instances of Criminal Content" on the internet, but they are not
showing that they care."

The Campaign for Human Rights in Iran has also learned that Rouhani has been
asked by ultra-conservative Tehran Prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dowlatabadi to ban
Telegram ahead of the upcoming presidential election scheduled for May 19, 2017.

Rouhani has yet to respond to the request, an informed source told the Campaign,
but his administration refused to comply with similar
pressure from hardliners to block popular
apps, including Telegram, ahead of the country's February 2016 elections for
Parliament and the Assembly of Experts.

Since 2014, the Office of the Supreme Leader, the Judiciary, the Qom Theological
Seminary and the police have called on the Rouhani government to limit or ban
access to Telegram because it allows users to share content deemed by hardliners
as "anti-revolutionary," "immoral" and "anti-religious."

In other words, hardliners have been trying to counter Telegram's popularity
because they believe it enables domestic political dissent.